Mackie's Blog!

Feeling a little better everyday so far, so that’s good. But don’t matter how bad you feel, the horses still got to eat. So I bundled up a few days ago and Kathy followed me with the truck and trailer to our neighbors house, Mike, and picked up a couple of one ton bales, to hopefully get us to haying season. You don’t want to know what it cost.

Today I will try to get back in the swing of things and get a couple of horses rode, in preparation for this coming weekend and the clinic in the Mimbres Valley, at Sue’s

We are getting a few more persons interested, which is great, but we still have room for a few more so if your interested or you think you know of someone who would be interested have them contact me and we will make it happen.

Was just now thinking about rest. I talk a lot about rest at the clinics and private lessons that I do. I think it is one of the things that most people have no idea about and, unfortunately, trainers don’t have a clue about it. I often tell folks that in order for your horses to really understand what you want you have to really understand what they want. And what do horses want you ask? They want comfort. How can you and I provide them comfort during training? By making the rest they get, as long as the work they have just done. That’s not always easy especially if you are trying to make a living training. Time is money, so they say. But in order for our horses to really understand a lesson, or to understand that they did the lesson right, we have to, we must, reward them with comfort. That’s how they know that they have done the right thing. So work at making the rest you give your horse as long as the work you have just asked them to do and see if you don’t see a change in them wanting to do the right thing quicker..